“He is the architect of it and he is answerable,” Aatish Taseer said in an exclusive interview to India Today TV from New York.

Speaking to India Today TV Consulting Editor Rajdeep Sardesai, Aatish Taseer said that it was “a very-very ugly thing for a democracy like India, the light of freedom in Asia, to be going after someone as small as a writer.”

‘Govt playing politics of vendetta’

Taseer, who wrote the Times magazine cover story calling PM Modi Divider-in-Chief, said that the Indian government’s claim that he concealed information about his father’s Pakistani nationality while filing the application for the OCI status was nothing but political vendetta.

“I have it on absolute authority from someone who works within the government that it was done by someone who wants to please Mr Modi,” Aatish Taseer said.

Aatish Taseer said that although the title of the story [Divider-in-Chief] was not chosen by him and rather by the magazine, “it was true that the government is playing the politics of vendetta and is coming after writers and journalists in systematic ways. In my case, they found a tailor-made solution, but there is nothing about this which is innocent.”

‘Did not conceal my parentage’

The New York-based author dismissed Modi government’s claim that there was nothing political about the revocation of his OCI status and it was done purely because he hid the fact that his father was a Pakistani.

“My documents were filed by mother in 2000. She raised me as a single mother for many years in India. My parents were not married. Any civilised government which was not being vindictive could have simply come forward and asked for clarification about missing documents or any discrepancy.”

Aatish Taseer’s mother, Tavleen Singh, is a famous Indian author and journalist. Taseer’s father was a Pakistani author and politician – Salman Taseer.

“I would appeal to Mr Modi to not encourage this politics of vendetta and to see that I have not engaged in the behaviour of concealment and to see that I am a writer steeped in Indian concerns and to consider that someone in my position should be granted an exception and should be allowed live and work freely in the country that he loves,” Aatish Taseer said.

‘Freedom to criticise part of Hindu soul’

Aatish Taseer argued that to ask a journalist not to criticise would be the death of his dharma. “Freedom and the right to criticism is the life blood of journalism. If someone tells you to pull your punches in order to work and live freely in India, you would say no. It would be a kind of intellectual death. It would be the death of one’s dharma,” he said.

“I think the spirit of freedom of discussion, dissent and tolerance is not only part of the modern Indian nation but is in the Hindu soul. So, to create an atmosphere, where critics would be silenced or terrified, where a climate of terror prevailed – you are really doing violence to the spirit of what India has stood for not just for 70 years but millennia,” Aatish Taseer said.

On being asked about what is the difference in stifling of dissent in India during Indira Gandhi rule and the present times, Taseer said, “Indira Gandhi’s act during emergency was a hideous thing and India managed to come out of it and stand again, but you cannot deny that the route Mr Modi has taken India on since 2014 is the route where politics of fear, vendetta [prevail], where critics are silenced, where there is atmosphere against the minorities. He is the architect of this and he is answerable.”

‘Have been bereft of my home’

Aatish Taseer said that he has a sense of grief that he was not allowed to visit a country where he lived for so long. “My grandmother, who raised me there, is now 90 years old and still lives there. I feel like I have been bereft of a country I have always considered my home.”

“For me it’s a question of family, of country, of my grandmother who raised me and instilled extensive Indianness. She was part of a really syncratic India. And I have to fight it, even if it means filling a review with the government or going to the court because they have left me bereft of my country,” he said.

On being asked if he would accept the restoration of his OCI status if he is asked to never write critically about the Indian government, Aatish Taseer said no, as ‘it would be a bigger death of my profession’.